Best Part Of This Party's Helping Kids

Conversations

September 23, 2005|By WIL LAVEIST Daily Press

Evelyn Daniel Chandler loves to organize a good party. It could be a fashion show for the NCO Wives Club in Portugal, reviving the Isle of Wight County Fair or throwing a Hampton NAACP fundraiser. But nothing jazzes her more than a party in the old neighborhood, especially when it's about supporting kids.

"I was an original Aberdeen kid," said Chandler of the historic Aberdeen Gardens neighborhood in west Hampton. She lives in Carrollton now. "My father came here in 1937. I left in 1950, moved to New York, met my husband, and after a while he joined the military and we just started traveling."

And partying.

As we sat in the cafeteria of Aberdeen Elementary School, Chandler was thinking about her next party -- the 22nd Annual Deen's Day parade and celebration on Saturday. She had just wrapped up an hourlong planning meeting of members of the Aberdeen Athletic Association.

"I like fun and I like to party," Chandler said, smiling and pumping her shoulders as if a band were playing. Aberdeen "is one of the greatest untold stories around here. What they do. They volunteer. They don't get a dime for it. Seven hundred and something kids in athletic programs that they're keeping busy. The Hampton Police Department doesn't have to worry about them. The sheriff's department doesn't hold cells for them. They've been doing it 23 years. It's just the magnitude of it and none of them says anything about it. They don't brag. They just work."

It's true. The Aberdeen club is representative of several others in neighborhoods across Hampton Roads that are run by volunteers who are molding hundreds of kids. Clubs with cheering squads, football, basketball or baseball teams. Clubs that do fundraisers that need support. Two of my children have participated in Aberdeen programs and my wife is a volunteer.

As a parent and former coach with an Illinois youth football club, I've seen both of the adult sides. Volunteers, typically parents themselves, log a lot of after-work hours and often have to put up with knuckleheads -- and I don't mean the kids. I mean knucklehead parents who might pick children up late or fail to support them at all, though they could. Or the ones pressuring their 12-year-old athlete to be the next Allen Iverson, but who are no-shows at school parent-teacher conferences.

By the way, "Bubbachuck" Iverson played football for Aberdeen, which, like other area programs, has spawned several success stories in -- and beyond -- pro sports. My favorite parents, though, are the ones who constantly second-guess coaching decisions. Everybody knows the Gosnold's Hope Park lawn chair quarterbacks are always right.

The Aberdeen parade and festival is the group's main fundraiser. The parade will begin 9 a.m. at C. Alton Lindsay Middle School on Briarfield Road and turn down Aberdeen Road to Aberdeen Elementary School for the outdoor festival. Special guests will include Hampton former city manager George Wallace and his wife, Mary, as grand marshals. The festival will feature music acts, rides, vendors and of course Aberdeen's finger-lickin' fish sandwiches. This year's theme honors our troops. If it rains, Aberdeen will try again Oct. 1.

Chandler's list of community projects spans several organizations and government boards, including chair of the Isle of Wight County Planning Commission for eight years. She's influential and connected. Chandler was the leader who got Aberdeen Gardens listed on the Virginia and national registers of historic landmarks. She led the committee meeting for this weekend's party like a marching bandleader -- a 74-year-old bandleader at that.

"Hey, I'm proud of my age, baby. Tell it," she said, working her neck, her hands on her hips. "I love the life I live and I live the life I love."

"I've got a big mouth," Chandler said, referring to the way she inspires people to get involved. "It's just my nature. I like to talk to people. I've found that the bigger people are the more fun they are to be with."

"She has an Aberdeen T-shirt on that nobody knows about," said Linwood D. "Butch" Harper, the group's commissioner. She wears the neighborhood close to her heart. "She loves Aberdeen. Plus when she talks, people listen."

And party, too.

Wil LaVeist can be reached at 247-7840 or by e-mail at wlaveist@dailypress.com. *